Campbell: Tuned In: Green Day, Kate Voegele, Years

Green Day breaks it down — again — on ‘21st Century Breakdown’

“21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN,” Green Day (Reprise)

Green Day needs a bailout.

It’s not that the California trio is in danger of creative bankruptcy, it’s just that the band — whose members will all be 37 by year’s end — needs a few younger acts to step up and help fill the void of snarky-smart infectious rock. Green Day has survived far beyond the average life expectancy of a punk band, navigating past the corpses of its contemporaries in the ’90s and sailing pretty much unchallenged through the 21st century with equal parts socio-political banter and pop contagion, their superior position solidified with the 2004 rock opera “American Idiot.”

Green Day’s latest, “21st Century Breakdown,” is another ambitious and largely successful project, a three-part tale of young lovers, Christian and Gloria, struggling to find their way in an uncertain new era. It only takes three or four chords for vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool to dispatch many of these careening and thrashing cuts about oppression, disenfranchisement and ... love.

The plot is straightforward. Armstrong calls out foes (“Know Your Enemy”), indicts Christianity as the cause of social ills (“East Jesus Nowhere”), and admires his heroine as a gal who “wears a rubber coat for the coming of the nuclear winter” (“Last of the American Girls”). Gloom and hope compete on the final trilogy of “21st Century Breakdown” as Armstrong is literally tired of fighting (“21 Guns”) deflated by the modern world (“American Eulogy”) and yet dreaming of enlightenment by the closing cut, “See the Light.”

Green Day’s focus and stamina impresses as the band charges vigorously ahead, dropping in a few well-placed swerves and an occasional ballad. Diversity isn’t this band’s strength, but there are adroit flourishes such as a time change on the title track and a beefed-up use of piano throughout.

Still, this is over-exploited turf for the trio, and good as they are, their basic sonic limitations are blatantly exposed when played out over 18 songs that can’t help but sound like each other as well as previous work.

Rating (five possible): 3-1/2

Kate Voegele’s vagueness doesn’t play well

“A FINE MESS,” Kate Voegele (MySpace/DGC/Interscope)

In a circular pattern of events, singer-songwriter Kate Voegele had to assume the role of an actress to play the part of a singer-songwriter on “One Tree Hill,” which transformed into a vehicle for her character, Mia, to sell Voegele’s songs. As a result, Voegele’s 2008 debut, “Don’t Look Away.” was a modest success and pushed her up the record-label food chain from MySpace Records to Interscope.

Continued cross-promotion between fiction and reality will help her new “A Fine Mess,” but Voegele and veteran producer Mike Elizondo aren’t doing much to earn her breakout success.

First single “99 Times” does its part: The hard-pop song is a clever cut that builds slowly on the festering tension of the singer coming to terms with conflicting signals before issuing a charismatic smackdown.

But Voegele, 22, struggles with mixed messages on nearly every track of “A Fine Mess,” creating a degree of battle fatigue and far less impact than “99 Times.” Elizondo slides the serviceable Voegele vocals down the pop-rock assembly line with no fanfare, sometimes suppressing her in clanging, over-electrified arrangements. Listeners discover she’s confused and vulnerable but she’s got a chip on her shoulder and a sassy attitude as the paint-by-numbers songs roll by with predictable precision and alarmingly familiar hooks.

However, the countryish lilt to “Playing With My Heart” adds softness as the singer seeks mercy, and despite its blaring tone, closer “Forever and Almost Always” adequately conveys the heartbreak of being a weak partner in a relationship: “It ain’t right to just love me when you can.”

Meanwhile, the fluid foundation of “Talkin’ Smooth” gives freshness to Voegele as she calls out a prospective lover for using an old line on her: “I don’t know why, but it seems that I’m not the first to have heard this speech.”

Those who hear “A Fine Mess” might experience a similar deja vu about the singer herself.

Rating: 2-1/2

Indie Years balances payoffs, setbacks

“YEARS,” Years (Arts & Crafts)

The upside of DIY indie projects is that there aren’t too many people around to overthink the production. The downside is there may not be anyone around to think it through, either. Both situations appear to be true for Ohad Benchetrit and the self-titled release from his act Years.

Benchetrit, a founder of the band Do Make Say Think and a sometime-instrumentalist with the Broken Social Scene signed to Toronto’s Arts & Crafts label, seems to be playing it by ear on “Years.”

The result is a low-budget-feeling, instrumental-oriented collection of atmospheric music. Much of it is layered and cinematic in scope, including opening and closing cuts “Kids Toy Love Affair” and “44,” respectively. However, Benchetrit milks more emotion out of humble, albeit earnest, acoustic guitar work on “Don’t Let the Blind Go Deaf” and “The Assassination of Dow Jones.”

Still, it wouldn’t be fair to suggest “Years” is at its best when Benchetrit keeps it simple because two of his most ambitious tracks are the highlights: The moody “September 5. October 21. 2007.” suggests an evocative story with its unusual and successful mix of ponderous programming, cosmic effects and Milos Popovic’s accordion, and drums kick around a dirty beat to give a primitive foundation for the call-and-response horns on the charmingly offbeat “The Major Lift.”

But then there’s that downside. Benchetrit is prone to lose focus and self-indulgently burrow into austere instrumental death holes where the only way out is cacophony. Some of these jags merely rough up an otherwise decent cut, but some — like the metallic turn of “Are YOU Unloved” and the lumbering muddle of “A Thousand Times a Day (Someone Is Flying)” — ruin a track completely.

Apparently freedom to create comes with a price.

Rating: 3

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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